Ye Olde Demo Scene?

[z5]

@effy:
thx for mentioning my site (A.D.A.). Webmaster (me) is from Belgium too. Van waar ben je?

@others:
I find it a pity that people keep talking about the old days without mentioning the demos from after 1995. Sure, demos like Desert Dream, Budbrain, Enigma, Hardwired, Iraq demo, nexus 7, mental hangover,... were all absolutely fantastic demos.

But maybe you should check out some of the more recent demos too. Planet Potion (Mekka 2002) was easily the most stunning intro EVER released on Amiga and it is even considered one of the most stunning achievements on any platform. If you don't have ppc, then please check gift/Potion which is one of the best 68k intros ever released!

Then there is all ephidrena stuff with demos like Concrete, Substral, J'_ and very cool 4k intros like Bier, Brus (which is a whole musicdisk in 4k which actually sounds good),...

Then there is stuff from Appendix, The Black Lotus, Madwizards, ...

And there are so many more.

[odin]

Is there a list of 'must-sees' available demos? I have to say that the demo-scene really a part of Amiga history which passed me by unfortunately.

Or if someone could point me to some demos (aminet? ExoticA?).

[Calen]

@ z5

 I agree with you that there has been some nice demos from '95 onwards, i was just mainly pointing out the guys in the Amiga demo scene when the Amiga was the main demo scene tool, all these guys done some great things for it back then and i know it helped push  sales of the amiga back then to, i was one of them :-)

As for more recent, yeah, The Black Lotus guys done some great stuff, on the PPC side of things Mankinds  "Deathtrail" is just amazing.

To me its not just the visuals that make the demo, its  everything combined and originalty, Amiga had that in buckets.
I'm a sucker though  for fast paced  visuals with the Audio synced, Remember Technological Death,SOTA,Extension or Acid demo ? :-D

Looking at the more recent demos on PC, those big demos, 90% of them for me our watch once only productions.
Tis good to see though that Fairlight our still doing quality productions even if it isnt on our beloved Amiga, check out Tatsu.

Great website btw z5, keep the good work up :-)

[z5]

@Calen:
Well, it is really strange but somehow most pc demos don't appeal to me either. I follow the pc-scene too but for some strange reason, very few pc demos have actually impressed me. Dunno why. I don't really like the "plastic, billion colors, tons of layers on top of each other, this looks just perfect" style that most demos seem to have. Strange really...

And yep, i really love fast paced synchro stuff too. The demos you mention and ofcours stuff like most Polka brothers demos.

As for my site, i ain't gonna stop yet  ;-)  I have about 100 demos and 900 screenshots waiting on my HD  :-)  By the way, next update will feature some real oldskool classics again (a clue: this isn't a f***cking demo, it's a scoopex demo  :-P )

[z5]

By the way, if somebody is interested in the pc demoscene, some people are putting together a DVD with the best demos (both oldskool and newskool). As far i can tell, the quality of the DVD will be fantastic and very professional.

The project is done by some people from the very well known and respected pc archives Hornet.

Available this autumn, this is a must buy (for me at least  ;-) ).  If the project turns out a succes, then they want to make an Amiga DVD next!

Check it out at demoDVD project

Cool,

Now there are at least 3 Belgians in here.
Maybe we can start a new amiga-club in Belgium :-)
Or maybe a new Demo Group ?

Greetz,

[Calen]

aww sounds great, Amiga best demos all ready to watch on DVD  :-o

[Temal]

Hmm...I think I heard something about one of the
2D-gfx artists from TBL (not Louie, the other guy
...Danny!) is working as a Matte-painter at the
company which produce special/visual effects for
Harry Potter. Very talanted guy!!

Oh...I don´t mind when groups like Mad Wizards
make demos for high-end Amigas. Alot of 3d, but
Cruel Karma Forms has some really cool effects that
I havn´t seen much of in the PC-scene...

[enzo]

My favourite (oldskool) demos are Alcatraz: Odyssey (the 40 minutes long show), Phenomena: Enigma (esp. the music of Tip), Budbrain: Megademo (the toilet  :-D ) and Spaceballs: State of the Art.
These demos are available in WHDLoad version too. The "nowadays" demos differ, that it's gfx mostly drawn at pc (then converted), the sound is open mp3 (then downsampled). Some of them requires 3D card (Potion intros, MAWI demos), which I would like to watch, but I haven't got a 3D card (because only few Amiga programs use it).
The old demos had much better atmosphere. To learning code on Amiga was very hard (programming books hard to come by), almost all of the graphic was pixelized (just some digitized, because that time appeared digitizers) and great sounds delivered (Tip,Mantronix,Firefox).
bye,
enzo

[samface]

I used to be the graphics artis of a small almost completely unknown demo group from Sweden called fACTOR. Made it to a fourth place on "The Party" (-97 I think) in denmark as our best achivement. Those were the days... :-)

[Skyraker]

OK, the idea of DVD demo's etc sounds really peachy, but the jaw dropping stuff was something like SOTA on a SINGLE FLOPPY!!!! , I've heard some people on here saying 'aaah well when OS4 and A1 appear, i'll get cracking in some C'

What made us different gentlemen was we did it in assembler and fitted it into a stupidly small space of media.. if we start banging out huge demo's .. no matter how pretty on DVD's or CD's then the point is lost... we would no longer be kings... and to this day .. we are the kings of the demo scene.. no one, and i mean no one has even come close....

Look at the intro's ffs, as soon as the floppy went in the drive  - blip- eye candy and rockin tunes!!!

We must not get complacant just because we have 600MHZ to play with and a new graphics architecture... stay with the old skool thinking and lets show the world what the amiga can do!!!!!!!

Best Regards as always

Skyraker who is called Skyraker.

[Effy]

SamFace : I'm not an active scenemember on Amiga, just collect cool demo's that I get, but Factor is a group that I've got sum stuff of, so it's probably not so unknown as you think it is !!

[Mike_Amiga]

Hey z5 you have your avater based on the Bud Brain Demo that was cool. However Retena Burn was the first time my Amiga rocked the house, with flashy epelectic fit enducing images. :-D

[z5]

Mike_Amiga wrote:
Hey z5 you have your avater based on the Bud Brain Demo that was cool. However Retena Burn was the first time my Amiga rocked the house, with flashy epelectic fit enducing images. :-D

Retena Burn, i remember this demo  ;-)  Talking about flashy epelectic fit enducing images, i still remember being really impressed by a demo called Humanoid. It came on a disk with two other demos (an art of noise tune and a michael Jackson tune). I still have the disk! It had a pumping techno track (probably ripped from commercial tune) and lots of flashy visuals. At that time, i was AMAZED. :-o

Z5 humanoid was the first demo I had on my A500 all the spinning sausages on plates flashing!!! My budgie used to have a fit watching that. Like the other point made the smaller the better assembler programming a true art. I went on a programming course once and the tutor said assembler was no faster than C (B*llsh*t)... He was a winbloze freak and had no idea what could actually be done on a system and thought API's where the only way.

while were on the subject I am really struggling to find an old MOD I dont know the name but it came on a PD disk called TOP TOE TUNE. The samples on it consisted of Baldrick from blackadder, Kittens and IceT. Anyone got any idea what it was called or actually have it. It's probably from about 1990 roughly.